I had to chuckle. I thought of the Hopi way of looking at the world as a constant process of being, almost devoid of tense. I don't think that I live or recount devoid of tense, it is just that I don't speak very much about the past... and that makes me come across as secretive.

I recall my dear, departed friend Steve once marvelling when I made a reference to my brothers. He was surprised I had a family he said, since I hadn't mentioned any in the years he'd known me up until that moment. "I was starting to believe you'd been born under a cabbage leaf or something," Steve joked.

My friend Darryl Cox, with whom I've been incredibly close (as closeness goes in the Rod universe) prodded me to write more here about my former marriage, joining the chorus of those who said that they knew me but did not know me because I reveal so little about my past.

My high school friend, Pam, phrased it another way. She said my life reads like a novel. I have become my own best "character."

The rub, of course, is that he is a chameleon character, who changes place and perspective at the drop of hat. There is a core "me," I think, but the external trappings with which people "place" each other have always been inconstant. That, I imagine, leads to the confusion or sense of mystery about the "me" who is the sum of accumulated parts.

As to the "feeling" thing, most times I leave it to those of you who bother to read this to extrapolate, to imagine how you would feel under the same circumstances I have encountered.

Imagine, if you will now, what it must be like to have cast yourself upon the winds of change, embarked on this uncertain hejira with no place to call "home." Couch-surfacing from country to country with no idea of when you will drop or where settle. Imagine that left you a trail of the pieces of yourself in various places with various people, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Bermuda, to hold in good stead for you until you "landed." Your only source of income in a free-lance consulting assignment out of California, for a start-up, and it has never actually been arranged how much you're being paid, only that they generously bail you out when you need bailing, they dash you quick infusions to keep you afloat as you work and they pursue this round of funding.

You are effectively homeless. Everything about your life is governed by the contours of other peoples' environments, other peoples' patterns, habits, schedules and routines. You must take the shape of your container.

Sometimes, alone, late at night, you can't help but wonder if this is a grand adventure or a flaming spiral into oblivion.

How would you feel? Dizzy? Numb?

There, you see? That was not so hard...

Paladin

You would be right in asking what compels me to make to these journeys of mine, these mad dashes across states and continents. I've been asked that before.

The only answer I have, which could be considered lame, is that I am looking for some place where I don't feel like a gardener attempting to grow roses in the desert. I am looking for a place where I feel wanted, appreciated and comfortable. A place to thrive.

That is why I have implored you, and continue to, to imagine a paradise for me. A place where, at last, I shall feel, "This is it."

I have increasingly begun to doubt, as you know from reading these ruminations, that America is not that place. So much of what America is doing to itself and its people is diametrically opposed to all I believe about the humane and sustainable. I do not believe the Almighty Dollar is the end-all and be-all of human activity. I do believe that we must somehow place compassion at the center of our equations and I seriously doubt that is possible in the United States any longer.

So I'm on a quest. And I have taken the leap of faith to embark upon this quest blindly and with severely limited resources. I await the Cosmic Nudge.

It's always possible that the Nudge will not come, of course. It wouldn't be the first time. Like Don Quixote, who also believed himself a knight errant, I might possibly be striving in the service of an imaginary Dulcinea and an imaginary kingdom. I might not even have the benefit of being the one-eyed man.

How can I go forth to slay dragons when even my own personal demons give me so much trouble. Speaking of personal demons, let's take ANGER, for example. For the past two days I have been wrestling with my anger about this part of the trip. Well, I'm certainly grateful that I have fulfilled my mother's wish that see she me this year, grateful that she made it possible, happy to have taken the history lesson that this visit to the island has afforded me.

I try to be a gentle man, you see. I don't shout. I am polite and diplomatic to the veritable fault. The Good Girl. I never eat the last cookie and I swallow the anger I feel for as long as I can. Normally, when it gets to me, I have resorted to Scotch Therapy.

But during this quest, I have chosen to eschew my normal modus operandi. I have sought other strategies for dealing with myself. I shan't try to drown my anger. Which means I have been left to struggle with it. First move: withdrawal. Just let my anti-social tendency have its head. I have broken three engagements thus far. Next, fight the desire to resort to the old habit. That's been a tough one.

Rudell commented that both she and my brother have noticed that I've exhibited a great deal of patience.

That's been going on since I was a child; I have developed the patience of Job...

My mother's sister, my Aunt Hester, was very warm to me when I went to visit her tonight. She noticed that I was catching a cold and prepared some medicine for me. It was a unique experience for me during this trip to have someone mother me...

As she has done since I arrived in Bermuda where she lives, my mother had me clean up Aunt Hes's dinner table, as they were finishing their meal (and though we had not partaken ourselves.)

If a Martian were observing my visit to my mother, he might ascertain that I was her returning houseboy. She addresses me entirely in the form of commands. But I am patient. Why should I expect anything to be different than it has always been? Just because I am changing my own habits does not mean that others will also be changing theirs...

As I type this, I am sitting at my "Aunt" Sis's house. After I had told my mother over dinner that I would not being going anywhere tonight, she invited Cousin Dorothy over to take me with her to Aunt Hester's and Aunt Sis's. It's now about 10:30 here. My mother insisted that (as she NEVER goes anywhere -- which my brother has verified) we wouldn't be out late; that I should make this round since my cousin Dorothy was already on her way over.

I reminded her for the second time that I would be working on completing this magazine tonight. That, in and of itself made it necessary for my mother to stay out late. She will be exhausted tomorrow, of course, as she has broken her long-standing pattern. But she has had me sit for four and half hours in two separate houses and listen to old women trace the family geneaologies of half the families in Bermuda, only able to sneak a few moments on the magazine while riding from place to place in the car, or finally going off to another room while they continued the litany (as I have done now.) And that was the point, after all.

I have to hand it to my father, when he decided to kill me, at least he planned to make it quick.

THINGS ON MY AGENDA THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Rod is "...walking the earth like Cain in the television series 'Kung Fu'." (A tip of the hat to screenwriter Quentin Tarantino.)

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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